What is the "Gospel?"
Adrian Warnock has been dialoguing with lots of folks about "The Simple Gospel." I won't try to list all of his posts on the subject, nor will I try to link to everyone who is trackbacking to him and/or is commenting on his posts. Suffice it to say, this little post he did on the subject has stirred up quite a few responses.
For my money, I think what he shared is fine and adequate, but I don't want to debate the individual points themselves. Also, since I haven't read everything that has been written I will ask your forgiveness up front if I say something here that someone else has already said. But, I want to bring a different perspective on this, which I think has the potential to bring the same amount of clarity to the discussion that a hot steamy shower brings to your bathroom mirror.
When someone asks what the gospel is, they are asking a question that is a bit more dfficult than we may think. Typically, when the question is asked today, our thoughts immediately go to a formula or a presentation. We immediately start thinking in terms of "Four Spiritual Laws," "The Romans Road," "Steps to Peace with God," or any of a number of things.
What I want to submit for your consideration is the notion that, properly speaking, none of those things should be considered the gospel at all. Rather, they are pedogogical devices that can be used as pointers to the gospel. Allow me to e'splain.
Think about your old American history textbooks from Junior High and High School. They all had chapters devoted to George Washington, the Revolutionary War, the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln and so on and so on. These chapters condensed all of those stories in such a way as to communicate what the textook authors felt was the essential information about their subjects in as small of space as possible. These textbooks would use stories from past eras, quotes and other primary materials as building blocks, but the textbooks themselves were secondary sources at best. They had value as secondary sources and as pedagogical devices but there value was limited. If you really wanted to know about George Washington, it would be far better to read a full unabridged biography of Washington than to simply rely on what came about in the textbooks.
We can expand the "pedagogical devices" notion a bit further. Textbooks and lesson plans are pedagogical devices but they have their limitations in that they always have to pick and choose what to teach. And, such textbooks and lesson plans are always open to criticism because what one writer or teacher thinks is essential material may not seem so essential to another writer or teacher.
I think this can explain some of our dilemmas when it comes to the "gospel." The best definition I have ever heard of the gospel is that it is the complete story of who Jesus is and what he has done for His people. I would modify it this way and say that the gospel is the story of:
- All that Jesus is
- All that Jesus has done
- All that Jesus has commanded
And where do we find this gospel? We find it in the pages of the New Testament in general and the gospels in particular. There is a reason that the gospels are called the gospels. They are the gospels because they tell the good news - the story of Jesus Christ. They are the divinely authorized "gospel tracts." If you want to get technical about it (and I love to get technical, at least sometimes) then there is a real sense in which you can't reduce it to a formula or a few points. It's a big, expansive story about who Jesus is, what He did and what He requires of us.
We can expand on this and acknowledge that the apostle Paul preached the gospel in the book of Acts and in his letters, so the gospel is not fully contained in the gospels.
One of my favorite books is called Conversion in the New Testament, by Richard Peace. This book is an exposition and application of the Gospel of Mark and in it, Peace contends that the Gospel of Mark is the story of Jesus' evangelization of the disciples. Thus, it is not the story of how Jesus wins the disciples to Himself early in the book, then disciples them throughout the rest of the book and sends them forth to preach the gospel. Rather, the whole book is the story of the three year process by which he evangelizes the disciples. The gospel is told "or presented" to the disciples over a three year period through multiple settings, circumstances, events and pedagogical devices.
Such an understanding throws us into fits in our day, since we are very fixated on getting down the perfect gospel formula. And this fixation with the right formula is symptomatic of another problem that I don't want to go into very deeply here, and that is the problem of identifying the moment of conversion. In Peace's book, he makes the point that the apostle Paul is one for whom we can identify the moment of conversion, in his Damascus Road experience. However, with the other disciples, you really can't say for sure at what point they were "saved."
For example, I have always thought that the disciples were "saved" when they responded to the initial call of Jesus to follow Him. I have always figured that, had one of them died sometime before the crucifixion and resurrection that we would see them in heaven. On the other hand, supppose Judas had died before his betrayal, would we see him in heaven? Also, what do we make of some of the places in the gospels where Jesus chastizes His disciples for having a hardened heart or an unbelieving heart (see Mark 6:51-52 and Mark 8:17-21). Such passages give fits to those who want to reduce the gospel to a formula because certainly we would not want to call someone "saved" who still has a "hardened" or "unbelieving" heart. Yet, I am not willing to take a stand that the disciples were not "saved" at this point either. It just seems to me that the evangelism process was still going on in their lives. It also seems abundantly clear that Jesus wasn't concerned with establishing a "date of conversion" in the lives of His disciples.
That is not to say that there is no date of conversion. The bible speaks of "salvation" as a "new birth" in John 3:3 and Colossians 1:13-14 speak of salvation as a change of kingdoms. Certainly a new birth and a change of kingdom are datable events, yet Jesus and the NT writers seem unconcerned about finding the birth certificates or things like that.
And getting back on point, it is this desire to date one's conversion that produces the desire to reduce the gospel to a formula. A formula can help you date someone's conversion. A formula is great for giving someone assurance of their salvation. When someone doubts their salvation, you can point to the formula and show where they followed the formula and reassure them.
The gospel doesn't permit such a thing - it forces us to walk by faith in Christ, not faith in a formula.
I want to add, as an aside, that I do believe it is possible to have assurance of your salvation, I just don't believe that we base our assurance on having followed the right formula. The book of I John is a good place to go to start formulating a doctrine of assurance.
Having said all of that I now want to go back to the whole idea of pedagogical devices and I will seemingly argue against everything I have just said.
In saying that the gospel is bigger than the formula or pedagogical device being used to help communicate it, I don't mean to say that these pedagogical devices have no value. While I believe the case can be made that the Gospels, or at least the Gospel of Mark, are primarily concerned with the story of the evangelization of the disciples, it is also true that Jesus evangelized individuals along the way. There are many who came to follow Him who didn't get to hear everything the disciples heard.
Furthermore, when the disciples were sent forth to preach in the book of Acts, their hearers didn't get to hear everything they heard. So, though the gospel was not communicated as thorougly and extensively through the disciples to their hearers as it was to the disciples themselves, the gospel was communicated adequately to those who heard the preaching of the disciples.
Due to the circumstances in which they preached, the disciples were forced to pare down the story of Jesus, they couldn't tell their audience of everything they had experienced with Jesus. But they could tell their audience enough.
In fact, even the Gospels themselves are "pared down" acounts of the story of Jesus. John tells us as much in John 20:30-31 and 21:25:
30 Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
25 Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.
John and the other Gospel writers didn't tell everything they knew about Jesus, they told enough to incite belief. In that sense, we can justify the use of pedagogical devices and even formulas, if used properly.
Think back to your 9th grade American history teacher. She could have taught you everything there wass to know about George Washington, but if she did, there would be no time to learn about Abraham Lincoln. And to know American history you really need to know about Abraham Lincoln.
Similarly, it is helpful for us to pick and choose particular points from the gospel story to tell others about Jesus. While I would never suggest that someone become a pragmatist, it is necessary to be pragmatic in the way we share the gospel with others. Ideally, we would use Jesus method of evangelism with everyone we meet. We would invite people into our communities and let them imbibe the gospel slowly and deliberately as the disciples did, not only hearing it taught, but seeing it embodied in the Christian community.
But we don't always have that luxury and there is nothing wrong with telling as much as you can about Jesus as quick as you can. In that respect there is nothing wrong and everything right with sharing a forulaic presentation like the Four Spiritual Laws or an EE Presentation or Adrian's Simple Gospel. As long as you aren't doing it as a monologue and or aren't really listening to their questions and interacting with them, those things are great. At the same time there is nothing wrong and everything right with handing someone a bible or a Gospel of John and asking them to read it and come back next week and discuss it with you.
This doesn't mean that all gospel presentations are equally good. Certainly a "gospel presentation" that doesn't deal with our sin and need for a savior is out of bounds.
When discussing these things we need to distinguish between the incorrect and the incomplete. One of the disputes that has arisen from Adrian's "Simple Gospel" presentation has been over whether or not the idea of "penal substitution" is a part of the gospel. I haven't taken up that dispute in this post, but that is a legitimate argument about the correctness of the gospel being presented. Many other arguments about these things deal with the completeness of incompleteness of the gospel being presented.
What I mean is that I have heard folks criticize different gospel presentations because they don't say enough or they say the right things wrongly. I have heard the Four Spiritual Laws criticized because it begins with God's love and not His holiness and because it doesn't say enough about sin. I have heard the EE presentation criticized because it's points really aren't in the proper order. I don't know all of the criticisms of Adrian's Simple Gospel, but I think many of them are along the same lines.
So, the Four Spiritual Laws aren't being criticized for what they do say but what they don't say. EE is criticized for saying the right things in the wrong order. Thus they are all deemed to be insufficient or errant gospel presentations.
But, getting back to the idea of "pedagogical devices" I would say that of course they are all incomplete, but being incomplete is not the same thing as being incorrect. Using this line of reasoning, we would have to say that Jesus gave an errant presentation of the gospel to the thief on the cross, yet I have a sneaking suspicion we'll see him in heaven. Even these incomplete gospel presentations are adequate for inciting belief.
Having said all of that, I realize that I am leaving al kinds of loose ends and unanswered questions. I'm arguing that maybe we can lighten up on all of the criticism of these different "gospel presentations" if we simply treat them as pedagogical devices and distinguish them from the "true gospel" which is found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The whole gospel story is found in the New Testament, whereas these gospel presentations can only give us parts. Yet, the parts can truly and adequate enough of the gospel story to incite belief.
Also, I understand that the terminology I am using is inexact and potentially unhelpful. I"m distinguishing the Gospels of the New Testament from the pedagogical gospel presentations, yet it is apparent that the Gospels themselves were pedagogical devices. So, any help that anyone would want to offer on this would be welcomed.
But the main thing is that if we can get past our obsession with identifying a date or moment of conversion, then we can keep these pedagogical gospels in their proper perspective and use them in a helpful way. Rather than overburdening them and ourselves with trying to get the exactly perfect formula to produce a genuine on the spot conversion, we can simply use them as helpful yet imperfect tools in pointing people to Christ.
Recent Comments